


Fall Like Fire

by Nosferatank



Category: Promare (2019)
Genre: Burnish Culture (Promare), Canon Compliant, Except for u know. Thyma living, Gen, Minor Original Character(s), The Promare Didn't Leave (Promare), Thyma (Promare) Lives, gotta fill those Mad Burnish ranks somehow
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-05-23
Updated: 2020-05-23
Packaged: 2021-03-02 22:22:42
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 5,879
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24340519
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Nosferatank/pseuds/Nosferatank
Summary: Night falls like fire; the heavy lights run low,And as they drop, my blood and body soShake as the flame shakes, full of days and hoursThat sleep not neither weep they as they go.--Thyma's breath catches in her chest, lava filling her veins instead of blood.Thyma breathes. She keeps breathing.
Comments: 24
Kudos: 41





	1. Chapter 1

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> the word lio used in the cave scene was specifically ‘dissection’ which. really shows the fucked up lengths the Foresight Foundation went to.  
> tw for nonexplicit medical/experimentation including children, and dehumanization.  
> blah blah stuff about anger and violent thoughts in regards to ptsd. And Thyma referring to herself as ‘them’ subconsciously was 100% intentional because even if she doesnt know the promare exist, they still profoundly affect the people they reside in
> 
> -  
> Me reading this 7 month old fic before posting: haha cringe. At least it’s kind of a neat look into what was trending (or at least what preoccupied my brain at the time) in this time period in the fandom.

Thyma woke in fits and starts, always to the same frost-rimed ceiling in the containment center.

At first when they started taking her from her cell, she fought wildly, breathing fire like a cornered dragon and desperately sparking past the cuffs to deter her hunters. All she had to show for it was a skull-rattling whack over the head and frostbitten limbs. The place the wardens pulled her to was sterile and steely, with neatly organized metal tables and people in lab coats bustling about.

She knew with the impossible certainty of past experience that she was going to die here. Thyma writhed in her captor’s grips, forcing herself to move past the ice locking her limbs, fighting to survive, to burn-

She opened her eyes to the sight of a relieved cellmate hovering over her.

Thyma’s mind was foggy and her eyes tracked her cellmates’ movements sluggishly. She’d been sedated, and she had _no idea_ what the Foundation had done to her. Still slogging her way through the post-sedation haze, Thyma checked herself over. She wiggled numb fingers and toes, tested her senses, and made sure everything was accounted for.

Somehow it was more unsettling, not knowing precisely what she’d been dragged out for.

—

In the second week, Thyma woke up with her hospital gown untied, though the flaps were crossed over her chest to protect her modesty. Still able to feel embarrassment, Thyma sat up and hunched over herself, looking to the Burnish that had taken to watching over her after the sessions. Kana had the worn look of someone accustomed to life’s many stresses and hard work, her fire a gentle green color.

“I’m sorry, Thyma.” Kana said, eyes downcast.

Dreading what she would see, Thyma faced a wall and clumsily nudged her gown open. The gentle pulsing heat in her veins constricted and Thyma lost her breath, because while her injuries had healed, there was still the evidence of the act. A ‘Y’ shape in thick pink was there for all to see, lines neat and professional as if pulled from a medical textbook.

Thyma thought she was better off not knowing what the foundation was doing, after that.

The next time a warden entered her cell and motioned to grab at one of her fellow prisoners, the heat in Thyma’s chest flashed like a chemical fire and she lunged, pouring heat-energy into her limbs and swinging her cuffs down upon the tormentor like a bludgeon.

Ice-white consumed her vision, and when her head finally melted out, Thyma’s stomach dropped when she saw that the stolen child had been returned, the side of his head shaved surgically-close and a thin slice across his skull.

The weight of her failure felt like a glacier crushing a campfire.

—

By the third week, Thyma had stopped fighting. She was just so _tired_ , and every frosted blast she endured just banked her fire lower. Her flames had faded and stopped feeding her flesh, leaving her chest scarred and her hands bandage-wrapped, free from the ice cuffs but trapped by their own charcoal-brittle weakness.

Just yesterday, her eyes had gone out too, light and hard lines fading from her perception. Like the coals of a dying hearth fire, the other Burnish huddled around her, the dim colors of their signatures bringing Thyma a small comfort.

Thyma didn’t even react anymore when the cell door slid open, but even with her physical sight gone she could sense the trio of bright flares, sparking and spitting and so full of _life_ it pushed Thyma to turn her head and look at them.

Their fires condensed and shrunk, then expanded to bask the room in a bonfire’s shared power, causing the weakest of them to reach out for the heat. The relief eased Thyma’s eyes closed, even as the yellow-blue-magenta Burnish hovered over her.

—

It wasn’t even the crashing and yelling that woke Thyma up; it was the heat, the promise of fire and things to burn, kindling to break her fast with.

She was supported by an orange ember, a man whose name she never could remember helping her up and pushing her forward. The jostling of bodies and the chaos of combat were chaos on Thyma’s senses, forcing her to rely on the Burnish cores guiding the way outside, to the _whup-whup-whup_ of a helicopter preparing to take off.

Once inside the vehicle Thyma’s legs buckled from underneath her, already exhausted from the journey. A pair of equally-exhausted hands gently lowered her, where she once again felt her mind drift from its anchor.

—

The first thing Thyma remembered at the caves was the sensation of lying prone on her side, a bright blue flare guiding her hands to cup something papery and fragile. Tinder, dried leaves that would burn easily and feed her exhausted fire. Thyma reached deep for the remains of her own fire, but her pink lifeforce wasn’t even an ember, merely a glint of sunlight on steel. The need to burn was consumed by guttering weakness, and Thyma rolled over to her back and closed her eyes.

Faded as she was, Thyma felt something take her hand, and her breath hitched when sharp, warm flame curled into her lungs and radiated from her core, gently fanning her dying fire with the command to : _live, grassfires spreading low across the plains, sun-that-does-not-set_ :

Thyma’s eyes snapped open, and she curled onto her side and retched as her withering lungs and sluggish heat flared back to life, prickling her core and revealing just how _cold_ she was before.

The clusters of inner fire surrounding her consolidated into humanoid shapes, sharpening and defining themselves beyond the fire they carried. Thyma recognized the orange and blue flares, exhaust smoke and burnt metal clinging to them like a second skin. The yellow-blue-magenta blaze faded to show a young man wearing open concern and relief on his face, his steady stance betraying how his fire roared back to life from the depletion.

This time when Thyma held out her hand, the yellow-blue-magenta Burnish took it, and Thyma hauled herself up and spared a moment to thank her fellows for the meal before lighting the tiny campfire in front of her ablaze. Any pretense of patience was lost the moment the campfire went ablaze, her fire devouring it after starving for weeks.

The Burnish who shared fuel and fire with her was talking to a young man tied to a stalagmite, blank and flameless to Thyma’s Burnish vision. For the first time in days, Thyma stood up under her own power and faced the same direction of her fellows, feeling their own prongs of heat twirl around her nourishing hearth and feeding the blaze to new heights. The sense of sharing-fire-sharing-fuel filled Thyma with warmth and a sense of belonging that she’d forgotten, in those seemingly-endless weeks in Freeze Force Detention.

The flameless’s face was stark against the sharp light of the multifold fire, and Thyma was struck with recognition from her first flare-up. The same firefighter who pulled her from the collapsing office building was staring at them all with comprehension dawning in his eyes.

For a brief moment, a flash of fear constricted Thyma’s chest, wondering if the firefighter would be burnt to ashes to cover the Burnish’s tracks.

What scared Thyma was that she would let it happen, regardless of past altruistic interactions. Every spark of panic and ember of ire inside her raged at the thought of returning to that frigid prison, that anyone who threatened them with that fate would _B∇RN_ -

Thyma’s connection to the fire snapped with her broken reverie, distracted by the rumbling sound of trucks idling nearby. The multicolored Burnish blaze faded with the arrival of the trucks, and as one every refugee rushed to board.

“Hey, wait! Get back here!” The firefighter called.

Thyma spared a glance back at the man, then turned away.

 _Not on your life am I waiting_. She thought, and did not hesitate to take the hand offering to boost her up into the vans.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> be nice to Thyma, she’s a recently-escaped burnish who is faced with a government-employed firefighter and a mess of spiking emotions from revival and a good bit of ptsd. We as the audience know Galo’s got a heart of solid gold, but she doesn’t. She doesn’t have a reason to trust him, at least not one that outweighs the previously mentioned reasons. 
> 
> Also the 'them' at the segment where she recognized Galo is actually Thyma referring to herself. because I kinda like the idea of the promare perceiving themselves and their burnish as one entity (‘perceiving’ being the keyword here). and on that thread, theres still a good bit of neural crossover between a burnish and their promare, even if the burnish in question is unaware of it, so i have some Ideas about that.
> 
> And I’ve got a whole mess of headcanons regarding Burnish and Promare, but one of the main ones is that the urge to burn literally feeds the promare, and by extension provides nutrition to the Burnish as well. Obviously though, man cannot subsist on arson alone and all that, so actual food is still required.


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> symptoms for ptsd can vary… a lot. it’s different for every person. I’m a casual writer, I write from my own experiences when I can and it may show here. Just roll w/ it.  
> i know the Mad Burnish lads are pretty rowdy dudes, but leading the Mad Burnish and, by extension, the burnish refugee settlement means that they at least are familiar with doing some basic shit to keep track of everything running like keeping a headcount.

Thyma was sick and tired of waking up in different places than when she closed her eyes.

Her body was still feeble and her inner fire underfed, flames and consciousness both flickering. Sometimes when creeping out of her sleep, Thyma sensed the banked Burnish heat signatures, saw the dark truck ceiling, heard the rumble of the engine, and thought that she was back in Freeze Force, returned from the unknown room full of scientists and listening to the cooling systems in her cell.

So Thyma took a breath, visualizing her lungs as bellows to a living forge, and did her best to ease her fear away. Some part of her knew she would always be afraid, dreading that she would close her eyes and open them back in the frigid cooler.

She never wanted to feel that helpless again.

Thyma was grateful when the trucks finally stopped, and reveled in seeing the sun once again, even going so far as to stare directly into it. Her vision didn’t sear, because how can a Burnish be scorched by inanimate flames?

Thyma let herself be jostled about as she took in the surroundings, the crumbling concrete-and-rebar ruins just on the edge of Mount Fennel’s pyroclastic flow, with the volcano itself grinning at them from the horizon.

It was desolate, and dry, and shadeless, and the most beautiful thing Thyma had ever seen.

Reluctantly leaving the sun but understanding the need for shelter, Thyma followed the refugees up the rickety stairs and up to the top of the gutted parking garage. The inside was still crumbling and ill-repaired, but surprisingly clean, with lots partitioned off for close groups to live in and campfires scattered at the edges, sizzling with all the colors a Burnish could produce.

There were cries of relief echoing around the concrete as the Burnish settlers recognized some of their family or friends among the rescued, clinging and embracing and flaring together like mixed-hue candles. Those who had never set foot in the settlement, like Thyma, stood rather awkwardly in place, unsure of where to go. 

One of the Mad Burnish leaders, Meis, jogged over with a pad of paper and a slightly scorched pencil.

He looked over their huddle and muttered. “Right, okay.”

“I know its been a real long day for y’all, but if I could get your names and ages real quick, then we can get you situated with a place to stay. Might be a bit cramped though…”

One by one a Burnish would give their information and be waved to a cubicle- oftentimes occupied by someone already, but nonetheless welcome.

Thyma was one of the last to step up. “Thyma Anthiese, I’m twenty-six.”

Meis’s handwriting was, Thyma noted, absolutely horrible. Wryly, she wondered if the lieutenant was picked to record administrative information for the sole reason that any thief or Foresight officer who managed to get their hands on the paper would be utterly baffled by Meis’s scrawl.

“Hey, uh, Thyma?” Meis caught her eyes before she could head to her ‘room’.

“I know you had a real rough time of it, in the caves.” He started, eyes flicking to the bob of mint hair across the hall. “So use the community campfires, and the mess hall a floor down. Coming that close to extinguishment is hard on your core.”

Tentatively, Thyma smiled and thanked him. Funny, how the rough-and-tumble biker was less intimidating than the bombastic firefighter was. Showed how much her worldview changed from the perspective of the flameless media liaison to that of the fire.

Thyma approached the tiny dorm where she would be staying and peaked behind the thin fabric curtain. Inside there were two cots, a few bags of… something, probably clothes, and what looked like a potted cactus. Cautiously, Thyma padded inside and poked at one of the backpacks with her toe.

“Sorry if it’s a bit crammed.” A voice called out behind her.

Thyma yelped and spun around, hands and hair blazing pink, as her possible-attacker threw her arms up in a gesture of surrender. “Whoah, it’s okay! I’m just the roommate.”

Feeling somewhat flustered and her core still pulsing wildly, Thyma tamped down her screaming fire. “… Sorry.”

The woman waved her off. “Hey, no worries. I shouldn’t have snuck up on you.”

Thyma’s roommate looked to be in her early thirties, with wild red hair and a leather jacket knotted at her waist. She was also wearing the ugliest scarf Thyma had ever seen, a chunky uneven knit thing tangling eye-searing green with red and purple.

Slowly, she offered a hand. “My name’s Galle. I’ll be watching out for you if you need it.”

Thyma pulled back her hand with a start when Galle’s palm lit up, red-edged violet licking over her biker gloves.

“Oh shoot, sorry. If you don’t want to exchange greetings you don’t have to.”

Thyma steeled herself and proffered her own hand, wreathed in bright pink. She was a Burnish, she was among Burnish, and the fire would never turn on her. Not like people had.

Their handshake was brief, fire grasping along their arms and leaving wordless smoke-whispers of : _Sheltering-caldera, lightning arcing from one cloud to the next_ :

“It’s nice to meet you, Galle.”

—

Fire was nothing if not adaptable, so long as it had fuel of some kind.

Thyma had only been at the settlement for a day before she got too restless, like a firecracker sparking and spitting, and approached Galle on what she could do to help. Just sitting around and talking to people or looking around the common areas was nowhere near enough to satisfy the ingrained need to do something.

“I want to learn how to fight. Or at least defend myself.” Thyma asked Galle, sitting in the mess hall for breakfast.

Galle quirked her eyebrow. “Are you hoping to become a Mad Burnish member? It’s not exactly secure work.”

“I know.” Thyma sighed. “I don’t want to be a Mad Burnish, I just… I never want to be helpless.” _Not again_.

“Sure, I can work with that.” The older woman agreed. “Is your fire coming to your call faster now?”

“Yup.” Thyma lit a thin needle of fire, giving her finger the appearance of a blowtorch. “I think I’ve gotten the hang of it.”

“Well, alright. You know how it feels to make a flare, right? Well you take that and kind of… knead it? Here, let me show you.”

In a self-contained flare of purple, a mid-length weapon curled into existence over Galle’s hands.

“… Is that a shovel?” Thyma asked incredulously.

“Hey, it works and that’s what matters.” Galle defended herself, but there was a smile with no heat behind it. “Give it a go yourself.”

Bringing up twin bonfires in her hands was easy enough. With the sensation of a wire in her core re-spooling, she tightened her grip on the flames and forced them to blaze hotter, to crystalize and condense. It required more concentration than just letting the fire run loose, like holding onto a handful of molten glass, but it was doable.

Thyma was left with a jagged stick of blue and pink plasma, warm and alive as any coal in her hands. Not exactly what she was going for.

“Well.” Thyma sighed. “It’s a start, at least.”

 _Nobody will freeze us again. Not without paying for it with their own ashless blood_.

—

Upon waking the next day and blearily shuffling her way down to the mess hall for a kind of unsatisfying canned breakfast and a more-satisfying campfire, Thyma was assaulted by one of the children from the detention center in her cell. The boy babbled something abut a party, and the volcano, but all his words went in one ear and out the other to Thyma’s tired brain.

Kana shuffled up and rested a hand on the boy’s head. “Sorry, dear. He’s just excited since it’s someone’s flareday party, and some of us are heading down into the volcano for it.”

Thyma had a few questions, namely why Kana said ‘into’ the volcano, and what exactly a flareday was, but what came out was “Can I come too?”

Thyma blushed with embarrassment from blurting the question out, swearing the tips of her hair were smoldering from the emotion. “I’m sorry, I-“

“No worries.” Kana waved her off. “I can see why you’d want to come to the volcano, after Freeze Force. I’m sure Haruki wouldn’t mind another tagging along. Anyone can come to flareday celebrations.”

“Oh. Uh, thanks.” Thyma said, a little dumbly. “Let me know when you’re leaving? I need uh. Need food.” And caffeine, if there was any.

—

The trek down the mountain was short, with the volcano looming over them seeming larger then it did from the perch in the parking garage. Their group was small, made up of the apparent flareday celebrant- an orange-yellow flare named Haruki- Thyma herself, Galle, Kana and her charge, and a few other residents Thyma never learned the name of. Even in the isolation and broad horizons, the Mad Burnish members took the rear guard, even on what was technically ‘time off’.

And it seemed Kana was being entirely literal when she said they were going ‘inside’ the volcano. Tiny vents that led into the cone itself were hidden among the jagged edge of Mount Fennel, leading them into tunnels carved from lava tubes. And once they reached the end of the tunnel, Thyma had to halt and hold back a gasp. Inside the cone there was a massive ring of bubbling lava, tinted yellow and magenta from repeated Burnish activity. In the center a demon-faced guardian mountain grew, its stone fingers scattered about the lava lake.

Heat buffeted at Thyma; not the burning blast she would have expected but something different, like a friendly hand brushing hair out of her eyes.

Thyma was so certain there was _something_ in the lava, but that same certainty didn’t scare her as much as it should.

Along the outer surface of the caldera were smaller, less active ponds of lava, like tide pools along the ocean. It became apparent why their little group was approaching the pools when a Burnish child shot off, and with a running start curled into a cannonball and jumped into the lava. The lava was viscous and sludgy, but it didn’t stop the boy from treating it like especially thick water.

“Is that… safe?” Thyma asked.

“For Burnish? Probably the safest place in the world.” Galle replied from beside her. “Won’t even singe the edge of your skirt, and there’s plenty of room to throw around some sparks.”

Further ahead there was a group clustered around Haruki, most likely his actual friends. Thyma could hear the snippets of conversation accompanied by gestures trailing sparks and smoke for emphasis. She felt a smile slowly start to creep on her face as she watched one of them haul Haruki over their shoulders and throw him into the lava, jumping in themself shortly after.

Thyma trailed after the group at a more sedate pace, dipping her toe into the strange pool only after everyone else had entered. When her feet didn’t burn and the _somethings_ in the greater lava lake did nothing about the intrusion, Thyma sunk deeper into the strangely relaxing pool-edge. Almost like she was relaxing in a hot tub, Thyma stretched her arms beside her and rested her head on a rock outcropping softened by the heat. She felt consciousness drift away, like a cat sunning itself beside a window.

—

: _Fire-in-flesh, curiosity?_ :

: _?_ :

: _Slow-flowing lava pillowing upwards, heat-that-welds and joins the flames_ :

: _Confusion, unfamiliar fuel! Who-what-where?_ :

: _Banking flames, smoke-whisper-soft, shh warmsleep shh, new-spark fire-life-soul divided-but-connected_ :

: _Sense-of-self, one-and-the-same but not, what the hell are you?:_

—

Thyma jerked awake to Galle’s frowning face.

“Dreams?” The older woman asked.

“How did you- what _was_ that? I’ve never had a dream like that, is- is it a Burnish thing?” Thyma asked, words still slipping evasively around her mind like drifting plasma, difficult to grasp.

Galle looked sheepish, even when hauling herself out of the lava. “Yeah uh, I should’ve realized you wouldn’t know. People get weird dreams here. Weird enough that we don’t live here despite it being a hell of a lot safer.”

“I mean… it wasn’t that bad. Really… I don’t have words for it, but I could live with it.”

Galle waved her off. “Oh, sure, some people come out of it fine. But oftentimes we’d get people who woke up and forgot words, or even their name for a while. One dude slept here and woke up acting like someone? Nah, some _thing_ completely different.”

She mulled over that for a moment; the connection between strange dreams, lurking movement below the topmost layers, and people who stayed too long not behaving like themselves.

“Do you… feel something at the bottom of the volcano?” Thyma asked, dreading and anticipating the answer.

“Only sometimes.” Galle responded, and didn’t elaborate further. Perhaps she simply couldn’t.

Even during the trek to the parking garage with her back facing Mount Fennel, Thyma swore she could still feel the volcano whispering along her back, like smoke signals from a distant signal fire.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> promare: say hello in the way they naturally interact   
> thyma: what the fresh FUCK


	3. Chapter 3

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> jumping a lil bit ahead here, since I’m sure y'all know what happens in canon.  
> In case it’s looking a bit wacky, ∆ are ‘A’s, ∇ are ‘U’s.

Thyma failed her promise to herself.

Freeze Force came once again, and though she fought with every grain of bitter brimstone she had and blazed high as any bonfire, her inelegant rod of Burnish plasma shattered against armor and she was frozen once more.

Her time in the ice was a half-conscious blur, like a snake deep in torpor. She didn’t know how long she was frozen, be it an hour, a day, a week, or an eternity. When Thyma came to, it was to a whirling sensation that sucked the fire from her, choking her on her own life.

 _This is what they were doing to us in the lab_. She thought, absorbing the sheer number of Burnish beside her and above her and across her, all of them fettered to the same horrid honeycomb she was.

The hours graciously given in order for her to catch her breath were gone in an instant, and this time it did not stop.

Desperately, Thyma attempted to hold her breath, to shelter her inner fire from her own pain before she could endure no longer and she _screamed_ , light and life and tendons unspooling from her mouth like a ghastly exhalation. The thousandfold wails dug into Thyma like a live thing, echoing from beside her, enclosed in this metal tomb, and below-

: _R∆GE, FE∆R, NO F∇EL TO B∇RN_ :

: _FIRE-IN-FLESH, THEM-YO∇-∇S!_ :

: _P∆IN, P∆IN, P∆IN, Ṕ̸∆̨I҉́N-_ :

-And above, the shrill-whistle battle cries of many (one?) flames crashing.

The sudden groan-snap of metal shattering drew Thyma’s hazy, glassy gaze forward, and she witnessed the magenta-blue-gold Burnish, Lio, go up in white-hot energy, the echoed sensation of barbed wire lashing across Thyma’s limbs.

Once more the Burnish death throes howled inside the engine room, provoking Thyma to writhe in her bonds and to thrash under the earth, beating her head against steel and earthen crust both.

Something grated across her connection, flint striking sparks against steel.

: _Brighter-hotter-faster! Incomplete-combustion, one fire one life one soul!_ :

: _Blaze high, beacon home!_ :

That… that sounded like a single voice, one she’d never heard before.

The metal prison lurched beneath her, and in a flash-bang of _feeling-sharing-show_ , Thyma understood. She felt the ripples of memories-passed-through-fire sweep across the ark. The fire- no, the Promare- guided the voice-named-Lio through every Burnish within a lightyear, depositing the hot coal of _information-origins-self_ in all of them.

Then, as soon as it flared, the luminous inferno vanished. The engine room was reduced to the color of lifeless ashes, grey with the knowledge that one of their own was dying, agonizingly slowly. Thyma hung her head low in exhaustion and aching frigidity, waiting for the Promare to breach the earth and destroy the foundations.

And they did. Just not in the way Thyma expected.

The blinding white of Burnish fire at its purest threw every angle of the engine room into sharp contrast, originating from the cracked pod in the center.

“And we’ll need help from all the Burnish too!” Called out, prompting thousands of Burnish to bridge their Promare into the core, coating the world in fire.

It was like nothing Thyma had ever comprehended; the other Burnish, the locus of the combustion, the single fire eating and renewing everything it touched, the stream of magmatic energy flowing through a tear in the world, whispering heartfelt goodbyes.

Then, it faded, except for the spark at the hollow of her throat remaining against the pull.

: _Home-that-is, not home-that-was_ :

Thyma’s Promare brushed across her, huddling further into shared flesh.

: _One fire-life-soul, perfect balance of heat-fuel-air. We are Thyma!:_

Thyma could only sob openly and feebly grasp at the spark, relief and fatigue and hope tangling into a welded knot over her heart. There were other Promare that she could feel, far less than there were before the rift opened but still enough to put her mind at ease.

Thyma’s communion was interrupted by the pulling metallic groan of steel as the hole in the ceiling expanded, making way for the trio of mechs bearing FDPP logos.

“ _This is Burning Rescue Station 36! Please remain calm for rescue! There’s more help on the way, and rest assured we will get all of you out!_ ” A feminine voice echoed from the loudspeakers of a hovercraft that descended from the ceiling.

Thyma was immediately wary, but as she observed the rescue effort, it at least appeared the mission statement was sincere. More FDPP mechs began to rappel along the engine walls, each carefully prying Burnish and ex-Burnish out of their prisons. Below the walkways, on the floor of the engine room, makeshift medical tents had been set up, attending to the released prisoners in need of care while the rest huddled together. The Burnish that still had their Promare subtly kept themselves between the Burnished and the Flameless, none of them fool enough to trust them fully.

The mech that groaned to a halt in front of Thyma was piloted by a man with cold hair and glasses, one lens cracked and soot staining his face. Even still, he was careful and professional. After he overrode the shackles Thyma collapsed to her knees, her aching shoulders and wrists stiff from abuse.

“Ma’am, do you need-“

“No.” Thyma weakly shook her head. “I’m alright. Take me down.”

The firefighter looked uneasy when she wobbled to her feet, but nonetheless complied. Thyma was grateful to have the ground under her feet after being carried down, and rushed towards her fellow Burnish congregated at the center.

Thyma’s time was spent carefully on watch for any suspicious activity from the Flameless, but it seemed their intentions were altruistic after all. With the engine room walls crawling with FDPP mechs, soon every Burnish was freed from the pods- or their ashes were.

A white rescue mech approached the massive huddle, stopping a respectful distance away. A bob of mint and black rose to stand atop the robot’s shoulders. The intercom in his hand looked half-melted, but evidently it still connected fine to the firefighter’s mech.

“The residential areas upstairs have been cleared!” Lio called. “If you will please follow us!”

When Lio descended from his perch and set his feet on the floor, Thyma had to squint and tilt her head ever so slightly. If not for the candle-spark drifting inside him, she would have thought the Mad Burnish leader to be flameless. Still, the Burnish followed him to the promised shelter, giving the Flameless emergency responders a wide berth.

The rooms meant for Kray’s ten thousand were quite nice, in all honesty. They seemed to function as multilayer dorms, with a common area and kitchen in the center of every floor. There was running water, cabinets and fridges stocked with healthy nonperishables, and squashy couches scattered about everywhere. There was even a damn bookshelf in each common room, stocked with useful and entertaining texts both.

The contrast between the comfortable Flameless dormitories and the Burnish cells on the same ship fanned the embers of Thyma’s anger at the injustice. She took vicious delight in tearing through the closet full of environmentally-guarded bodysuits and extraplanetary survival manuals, setting them aflame in the center of her room. And even with her Promare fed, she was so, so tired. Tired of being chased, of being in pain, of being smothered like fingers pinching a candle wick.

Thyma knew she should get some rest, knew she shouldn’t waste energy stewing in her own simmering anger and her fear, and… the bed did look inviting. But before she could succumb to sleep, Thyma cast her senses outwards, pinging every spark she could. Even the Burnished still looked different from the Flameless, with cores that felt like cinders and the faintest echo of heat.

Sighing, Thyma tucked her inner fire close and fell asleep.

—

Thyma’s dreams were disjointed and terrifying, full of technicolor whirling and dimensions she had no name for, overlapped with double-sight and the pain of extinguished infernos.

As soon as she woke, Thyma rolled off the bed, scrambled towards the bathroom like a drunken dog, and vomited profusely into the toilet.

 _Ugh_. Weird alien hangovers from hitting the collective consciousness were nothing to sneeze at, it seemed. And yet, groggy and crusted-over and kind of gross as she was, Thyma was alive. Breathing, and burning, and, and…

Really in need of some caffeine. This was the first time she’d felt like a whole person in a long while, and as a consequence she returned to her needs as a whole person from before.

Like a shambling corpse from pre-World Blaze movies, Thyma dragged her feet over to the common area, hoping beyond hope that coffee of some kind was stocked in the kitchen.

She paid no mind to the low conversation between Gueira and Meis, or to the eye-searing yellow-red jacket draped across two people in a bed made from shoved-together couches. Thyma was a woman on a mission, one that not even the constant high-alert-fear-of-Flameless could stop.

And like a shining holy grail, her goal called to her. A K-cup coffee machine. _Fucking rich people_. Thyma cast open the cabinets and grabbed a mug, shoving it under the spout and cramming a random K-cup from the stand into the machine. The trickle of coffee seemed to take forever, but finally it sputtered out and finished.

Gingerly she raised the finished product to her lips. Took her first taste of sweet artificial energy… and scowled. It was absolutely _disgusting_. She tossed it back like a shot anyways.

Somewhat more ready to face the day, Thyma turned back to the common room features that she had ignored.

Whatever the two lieutenants were discussing was too low for her to hear, although they did nod to her in acknowledgement, so she wasn’t being ignored. The couch pair were still sleeping like rocks, and- wait.

“Is that the boss?” Thyma blurted out. She felt embarrassed heat rise to her cheeks when Gueira and Meis stopped their conversation to glance at her.

“Don’t wake him up. We only just got him to rest a while ago.” Meis said.

“Thinks he’s fuckin’ invincible and doesn’t need sleep.” Gueira grumbled, exasperation and fondness both equally present.

“And the, uh, hanger-on?” Which okay, might be a bit rude, but from what Thyma could see the blue-haired Flameless was quite literally hanging on to Lio in his sleep. And drooling in his hair.

“Oh, Galo? Both he and Boss had to be bullied into resting, and they refused to leave each other alone, so. Here they are.” Meis explained.

“And Lio _let_ a Flameless into our lodgings?” Thyma asked. It was a legitimate query, since from what little she’d seen of Lio and picked up from talk around the settlement, Lio was fiercely territorial around non-Burnish. It was the kind of hyperawareness that came from experience, and time, and fatal mistakes long past.

Thoughtfully, Thyma looked at the firefighter in question, and sucked in a breath in surprise. What were the odds that the same man who pulled her from the fire, the one who was tied in the caves during her revival, was the single Flameless admitted into their recovering ranks?

There must be something really special about him, Thyma mused. Or perhaps Lio simply knew him deeply enough, somehow, that there were no doubts to his character.

The quiet morning was interrupted with a door slamming open, causing Thyma to jump a foot in the air while Gueira and Meis turned towards the clamor.

The abrupt entrance didn’t only startle the conscious people in the room; Lio leapt straight off the couch and haphazardly rolled off the back onto the floor, rising with blowtorch-flame daggers clenched in his fists. Despite his rumpled look and oversized t-shirt, he somehow managed to present himself as the most dangerous entity in the room. Galo, though far less reactive than Lio, still groaned and sat up, clearly still exhausted from the interrupted nap.

His weapons dissipated and he sighed heavily when he saw it was only Galle, looking sheepish at her intrusion.

“Aw, shit, sorry Boss.” The Burnish in question apologized. “But you need to know. There’s almost been a break-in.”

The alarm in the room thickened like smoke, and Thyma bolted out of her comfortable seat with anxiety lining her lungs.

“Who was it? Have steps been taken to keep more out?” Lio demanded, immediately taking charge. Gueira and Meis moved to flank him, their readiness speaking of years working together.

Galle shrugged. “It’s, well. It’s the media. There’s reporters fucking _everywhere_ from all over the state, but a bunch are camped out in front of the temporary entrance.”

By this time Galo had extracted himself from the couch and stood up, stretching his sore arms up in the air. “We can talk to them and get them off- I’m sure they’ll understand, what with all the cleanup and stuff going on.” He said, already starting out the door.

“Wait, don’t!” Thyma called.

At their curious stares she resisted the urge to shrink back, and took a deep breath. “You don’t have a script, or- or a statement, or a list of news companies to actually speak to?”

Judging from the varying looks of dawning comprehension, none of them did.

“Say, Thyma, do you know about that stuff?” Meis asked.

“Ah, yeah. I was a media liaison for the company before… you know.”

“Well,” Lio proposed, looking somewhat ponderous. “If you have experience with this, could you help?”

“… Yeah. I’d be happy too.” Despite the dangers of putting her face in front of this scandal.

And maybe Thyma’s future was uncertain, teetering on the edge with the weight of the Promepolis Burnish resting upon her. But she had the same Burnish’s support, she felt, a web of interconnecting fuel-lines criss-crossing and bolstering every Burnish in the building.

They would be okay, she decided. It would take time, and effort, and a cohesive face that might crumble, but it would happen. They would _make_ it happen.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Ok the narrative voice might be a bit weird in thyma’s ‘wake up in residential apartments in Parnassus’ section. This would be due to writing it on two hours of sleep, three sangrias, and enough caffeine to give a horse a seizure. It fits ok though, so I’m keeping it.  
> I wanted to do a lil bit about Thyma and Galo having a chat regarding his scars and her part in them, but sadly it didn’t really fit.  
> Galo and Lio are 100% experiencing the ghost drift from their mech btw. 
> 
> -
> 
> Anyways. Hope yall enjoyed the anniversary fic! Even though it's technically old. Feel free (read: please) leave a comment and/or kudos if you liked it!


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